Matt Buckler: Oscar shortcuts getting complaints

Feb. 24—People are always complaining about the length of the Academy Awards telecast.

When the Movie Academy tries to do something about it, however, people also complain about that.

This week, the Academy announced that it would present several awards before the telecast begins, edit them and then show the acceptance speeches during the telecast.

These are categories such as sound editing, makeup, original score, and documentary short.

These awards usually drag the telecast down and frustrate TV viewers.

The plan, however, has been blasted by people in the industry who consider it a sign of disrespect.

The bottom line is that people are upset with declining ratings, but really don't want anything done to eliminate that problem. The Oscars for best sound and best editing aren't entertainment, they're boring.

If the Academy stuffed those awards at the end of the best telecast, instead of the awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best picture, no viewers would be left for the final 20 minutes.

The Academy should do what they wanted to do and take the heat. After all, it has nothing to lose — it has already lost enough viewers. This may be a way to get them back.

And those winners will still be seen giving speeches. They just won't air live. Plausibly live isn't a bad idea — it worked for the Olympics, didn't it?

Storm delay

Many people tuned in to Wednesday's late newscasts to get the latest on one story — Friday morning's potential snowstorm.

WTIC-TV61, WFSB-TV3, and WVIT-TV30 all did the responsible reporting job — giving details of the storm, including accumulation, in the opening segment of the newscast. Viewers didn't have to wait for the information. Ryan Hanrahan of Channel 30 even said it was going to be tough to shovel, which meant we had more than 24 hours to try to get someone else to do it.

The same philosophy was not used, however, at WTNH-TV8. Bad weather was just teased, with the details promised for later in the newscast.

Since Channel 8's newscast started about 20 minutes late because of ABC News coverage, this didn't seem like a good way to conduct business.

The important news should be presented at the start of the newscast. And the storm scheduled for late today/early Friday was important news.

Dazzling Daytona

NASCAR, the governing body of auto racing, has received more than its share of criticism lately because of two factors — declining ratings and declining attendance.

Sunday's Fox coverage of the Daytona 500, however, seemed to put those factors into reverse.The race took place before a sellout crowd. And the TV audience of 8.868 million was higher than any night of NBC's prime-time Olympic coverage last week. The largest audience for the Beijing games was 8.7 million on Feb. 15.

Perhaps if the want to give the Winter Olympics a jolt in four years, they should add some motor sports such as snowmobile racing.

Aikman exit?

According to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, the media's top sports TV reporter, Fox NFL analyst Troy Aikman is getting ready to leave the pocket.

Aikman is reportedly "on the verge" of leaving Fox to join ESPN and its "Monday Night Football" package.

The reason, according to the New York Post, is money. Aikman wants a contract similar to the $17.5 million per year that Tony Romo is pulling in from CBS. Aikman has been an analyst longer, and he also makes sense when he talks, something Rambling Romo doesn't always do.

For the last few weeks, Aikman has been rumored to move to Amazon, which has an exclusive contract for Thursday Night Football. This ESPN offer, however, was unexpected.

Since ESPN will be televising two Super Bowls in the next eight seasons, it makes a lot of sense for Aikman to go.

He night even take viewers away from the Manningcast.

Follow Matt Buckler for more television, radio, and sports coverage on the JI's Twitter @journalinquirer, and see his articles on the Journal Inquirer Facebook page.